The future looks bright! @samlearner.bsky.social

Because having opinions that challenge us are useful. Nobody needs an article that documents Richard Ebright being a pile. We all know that.

The Covid ‘lab leak’ theory isn’t just a rightwing conspiracy – pretending that’s the case is bad for science | Jane Qiu While figures like Steve Bannon have exploited the issue, scientists have done themselves no favours by shutting down legitimate inquiry, says award-winning science writer Jane Qiu

Why does the covid origins debate remain so polarising & acrimonious?

What does this say about the state of science & the public discourse of science?

My @theguardian.com op-ed debut, from a sociological perspective

Include backstory behind the film Blame

1/

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Sure but the WIV was built in 1956, multiple decades prior to SARS-1 . Also, if you wanted to do that, you might build it where SARS-1 spilled over. Or where bats that are reservoirs for SARS-1 live.

Ok sounds good

There is evidence a lab was interested in GOF on bat coronaviruses and furin cleavage sites. That's not a common research project. How can we argue that is not evidence?

Again, I would argue there's good evidence for the market. Plus, f it was a lab leak, why did a super spreading event happen at this random market? That's why I lean to the market hypothesis. However, you are claiming that there is NO evidence of a lab leak and I strongly disagree with that.

i was talking to a virologist two hours ago about this very topic. paraphrasing, but essentially "we often write grants to fund work we've already done"

again, let me emphasize, i think a natural origin is more likely. but i think it's naive to claim there's 'no evidence' of a lab leak.

I've never found the grant not being funded convincing. When a grant is funded, it's often pretty typical to use funds to run a pilot of that grant to get more preliminary data to convince reviewers the project is feasible.

I read it again yesterday

Sure. A spillover event is more likely to happen/be detected in a large city. But natural origins proponents (and I am one) should acknowledge that this large city also had a bat coronavirus lab (which is NOT common) with grant proposals to do GOF-like work on bat coronaviruses.

We can't choose to pay attention to Worobey et al and ignore the DEFUSE grant.

I'm sorry but I disagree. I lean towards the market spillover theory, but there is real evidence of a lab leak. There has also good evidence of a spillover event.

I had this amazing experience with Claude where it had mis-learned some important formulas from Bishops "Patterns in Machine Learning." Specifically, it took the matrix inverses to be matrix transposes. It was very pushy on this topic and insisted it was right.

Prof. Colin Parrish To Be One of 65 New Members of the Microbiology Academy Class of 2025 The Cornell Daily Sun - Independent Since 1880.

Congratulations to @colinparrish.bsky.social, on his well-deserved election to the American Academy of Microbiology! www.cornellsun.com/article/2025...

We simply had to intentionally destroy the world’s strongest economy while dismantling our scientific and educational infrastructure to ensure that a team with a trans girl would never finish second place in the Mountain West volleyball standings again

Changes in bats’ diets increase spread of viruses, spillover risk | Cornell Chronicle When bats lose access to their habitat and natural food sources, they seek food on agricultural lands - new research explains why, when their diets change, they shed more virus and infect more hosts, ...

news.cornell.edu/stories/2025... @cayleefalvo.bsky.social @rainap.bsky.social

Inside Russia’s shadow war in the Baltics A series of suspected sabotage incidents has exposed the vulnerability of Europe’s undersea infrastructure

NEW: Russia's shadow war in the Baltics

How a series of suspected sabotage incidents in the Baltic Sea has exposed the vulnerability of Europe’s undersea infrastructure

ft.com/baltic-sea

w/ @richardmilne.ft.com @upyorkshire.ft.com @samjoiner.bsky.social @inari-ta.bsky.social @ian-bott.bsky.social

In fairness, couldn't that also be used as evidence Canada isn't doing enough? "Look, they only managed to stop 0.03 pounds, they aren't doing enough!"

Students pointed out some limitations with my gifs. Specifically, it's not realistic that one resistance strategy starts out with a massive pathogen load (fair enough). Anyway, feel free to use if they are helpful.

Here is the resistance graph, but again with time instead of our health metric.

Here are my resistance graphs. For every unit increase in our pathogen we have the same impact on our health metric. However, pathogen loads are quite different.

And then here is that same data, but with only pathogen load and time represented

Here was my tolerance graph. Two strategies, but different health outcomes

I guest lectured a class on tolerance and resistance last week (not a strong topic for me, I find the tolerance/resistance functions confusing). However, as 1) animations and 2) with a time component the functions finally started to make some sense.

this one seems more defensible

YouTube video by The Ezra Klein Show A Democrat Who Is Thinking Differently | The Ezra Klein Show

My conversation with Ezra Klein on building new cities and taxing the daylights out of social media corporations.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tnQ...